Hamidullah Noori was 8 years old when his father, uncle and cousin were killed by Taliban militants in Kabul, Afghanistan. As the eldest son, he soon went to work to support his family, selling boiled potatoes and balloons from a pushcart. Violence and flight have shaped his life ever since.
So as he follows news reports about the Russian assault on Ukraine, Noori feels a weary kinship with the refugees fleeing that conflict, knowing that their futures will resemble his past.
"This is something where I have already experienced it,” he said, sitting in his Richmond restaurant, The Mantu. "If you’re lucky, you survive.”